Great for anyone wanting to start a business.

It's hard for me to find anything wrong with Square. We have never really been tempted by the competition, and I doubt we will be anytime soon. Perhaps if you are running a store with more products or customers you may benefit from a different system, but I would suggest Square to anyone starting out. You can get set up today, and your customers already know how to use it.

Pros

I was working as a barista in a new coffee location in my local town. The owner of the shop was pretty new to the industry, and didn't have a lot of business experience. She needed a way to run cards, and she was looking at a few different solutions, but I mentioned Square, and she ran to CVS and bought one right away. She wasn't very tech savvy, so I volunteered to get it set up. It probably took me less than an hour. The interface is a breeze to use, customers get it right away when they need to sign for charges or enter phone numbers. There were days that I was the only person on staff, using Square and running between the milk steamer and the register was a breeze. One feature we used often was using a cell phone to take orders while people waited in their cars. This allowed us to reduce the lines in our shop, and keep the morning rush moving.

The flat rate pricing makes things extremely easy as well. As someone that is not an accountant, this made my life a lot easier.

Cons

Some of the reporting features can be confusing to read, and more than once have resulted in us blindly refunding customers.

Sometimes the card readers gave us problems, but this was usually solved with a quick reset.

After research, seemed like best choice on a small nonprofit's limited budget.

Our previous credit card processor charged us PCI compliance fee but didn't help us with our compliance issues. They were happy to charge an additional price. PCI noncompliance fee for more than a year. Switching our four physical locations and website to Square resolved those issues and saved those fees. Square Retail would no doubt help us more with inventory management, but we can't afford the extra monthly cost for the multiple locations. Software Advice and other review sites were very helpful in sorting through the hundreds of options and convincing our board that we could afford to make the switch to Square to help staff reduce time spent to manage both sales and inventory.

Pros

Fairly intuitive and forgiving (can back out of most screens if not sure where to find function you're looking for). Sales and national park visitor center staff really like the system, and have had little difficulty learning it. We have it set up with wi-fi on AT&T U-Verse and satellite internet and on a Verizon wireless-enabled iPad. Offline mode has worked during power interruptions and automatically uploaded sales when back online. Customer support has generally been top notch. Support Center has good information and comments from the Square community, though it can be a challenge to find the answer without fairly extensive searching. The Square stands, compatible printers, and cash drawers were easy to hook up and work well together. Straightforward pricing. Ability to accept multiple forms of payment with the Square chip reader and Virtual Terminal.

Cons

Would be extremely helpful to have searchable, downloadable start-up and user guides instead of having to cut and paste from web pages, which doesn't work well. We had to make a lot of phone calls to tech support during initial set-up, particularly for uploading inventory, because we couldn't find instructions online. Very time-consuming and tricky to upload inventory spreadsheet files that include multiple locations. After all the effort to upload, it appears that each item still has to have inventory tracking enabled manually. We assumed that's why we were entering all the inventory numbers into the spreadsheet. Moving inventory from one location to another also must be done manually. With desktop version of QuickBooks for Mac, Square's daily subtraction of fees for each location's sales vs. all fees charged once monthly by our previous processor has more than quadrupled the time needed to enter sales reports. Switching to cloud version of QuickBooks may help, as transactions can supposedly be downloaded to it. Had to purchase a third-party module to integrate our website's Magento Community ecommerce software with Square, but integration is very incomplete (total charge only is transferred to Square, not items sold, merchandise subtotal, member discount, or shipping charges). We accidentally entered some Virtual Terminal transactions with the wrong location selected and couldn't transfer them to the correct location. Tech support verified that the only option would have been to refund each transaction from the incorrect location and reenter them in the correct one. We bought a recommended scanner but found that we would have to manually replace our existing PLUs with very long barcode numbers for each item to use it.

Square delivers plenty of features at low cost

Pros

I have run a brick-and-mortar for more than 19 years, and got rid of my traditional merchant account about 5 years ago when fees became outrageous and unstable, and I also needed a mobile payment system as my bank did not offer one. I did some research and settled on Square. The product is intuitive and easy to navigate, and the cost for processing credit cards is reasonable at 2.75% for swiped and 3.5% for manually entered.
But that's just the beginning of what they offer: in 2013, the Square Market was an incredible add-on benefit provided for free! If you've needed e-commerce for your business, you know that this service can be costly, so for Square to provide it for merely the cost of each transaction processed is amazing. There are many features to the Market, such as the ability to embed items you are selling into your website, share on social media, etc. While the features aren't customizable to a great extent, it is still a very powerful platform for POS. I particularly appreciate the many reports that can be generated, receipts with custom messages you can send to clients who have shopped online, ability to send invoices, etc. They've added gift cards, which is a nice feature, and they have many third party vendor apps that interface with Square for inventory and financial processes for your business. New features are constantly being added, such as their Customer Engagement to create customer lists and do direct marketing to that list right from Square. This product is a powerful addition to your website and other marketing you may already be doing. I have recommended this product to many small business owners and non-profits, and have been a very happy user since late 2010.

Cons

I have found very little to dislike. I have seen comments online about deposits being held, a lack of ability to communicate easily with Square (initially, they had no phone customer service, but I always got very quick response from their techs via Twitter in the early days), and difficulty in raising deposit limits. I run two small businesses using Square, and for one of them had to ask for a large increase in daily deposits as my business grew. This was handled easily via email communications and took only a few days.

Not perfect, but a big improvement!

Pros

Sales staff really like it compared to cash register and credit card terminal (or old-fashioned knuckle-buster imprinter for our remote locations). Predictable fees, which have been lower than for our previous traditional credit card processors, especially for in-person purchases and for American Express. No monthly fees or PCI compliance issues. Square Community is a helpful resource. Dashboard with a variety of reports works pretty well, and it's handy to be able to generate sales reports or search for individual transactions quickly.

Cons

Lack of good integration with Magento Community web software (only bottom line charge comes through). No ability to easily transfer inventory from one location to another. Problem with cash total on drawer report not matching sales report. Usually cash drawer is correct, which means sales are not recorded properly. This problem has existed since at least August 2016, while their engineers work on it. This lowest cost version of Square probably gets less attention than their monthly subscription products. Daily subtraction of processing fees creates a lot more work in QuickBooks than traditional credit card processors charging fees monthly. Customer support has been hit or miss. We've been misled a couple times. After uploading a file with inventory quantities for each product at each location, which took a lot of time to create, we discovered that inventory didn't start counting down with each sale unless we activated that feature on each product individually. That makes no sense. Searching for sales of individual items can be quite slow because it starts loading ALL items before giving a chance to choose.

Great POS System for new companies.

Square has done wonders for our small business, it has almost everything you would need for a new business but there is somethings I didn't quite like. The system is great but there are some issues. To actually have track your inventory and have it sync up with Quickbooks required us to purchase Quickbooks online to be able to track our inventory and sync our daily sales. It was a little of a hassle but when it all comes down to it this register is great! I just wish it was designed more for a retail store or have that option when ordering the register. I haven't had any other complaints, it works well, user friendly, add as many products/items as you would need. Easy to use checkout for people without a good grasp of technology and how it works. I would honestly say this is a great POS system, very efficient and reliable! Plus you can download the app on your phone and accept payments where ever you are! That is the other great perk of this register!

Pros

Efficient, reliable, on the go app, easy to use, great for any store, easy to track your sales, keep costumer information that are repeats and order frequently, design and layout is simple and very easy on the eyes, it has two versions to layout your items, either a grid or a list so it is a personal preference of which you like to use, deposits your money that night.

Cons

Can't sync with Quickbooks unless you have Quickbooks Online, sometimes takes a while to start up and get going, the card swipe is very picky you HAVE to swipe it straight through or it doesn't accept the card (something that should be resolved soon I hope!) I just wish it wasn't only able to be used on Apple too. I am not a huge fan of Apple products. I would prefer to use a Samsung or Andriod tablet rather then a Ipad, but that is just a personal preference.

Nothing easier!

Pros

Wow -- we went from an expensive merchant credit account with expensive fees above and beyond transaction fees. The device/software was very inexpensive to move to. Moving to Square reduced costs significantly and transaction fees were well in line with the "discount" rates we were getting before -- without all the other fees. Because we're not handling credit card data in house, it also reduced our needs for managing compliance. It's easy to mobilize staff, the interface is simple, and the account can also be pulled up on a computer other device with a browser.

Cons

We had to purchase a new Square reader device when credit card technology evolved to chip, but I don't know that Square could have really done anything about building a device to handle the physical aspect of the technology change at the time they created the initial hardware. It wasn't a significant cost to upgrade the obsolete device to a chip version. It had no impact on the application.

Excellent for small businesses

I feel that this program really has provided my company with a resource that is necessary for running a small business. I love the UI design and that it's fast to learn right from the beginning. It didn't require any downtime to get to know it better. Additionally, my customers love how fast and easy it is to use and I feel it has been a big help for my company in the long run.

Pros

I am very happy with the easy to use app and features. The software really provides plenty of functions to keep tabs on those who shopped with me before and even allow me to keep an eye on what is running low in my inventory. There is a good spreadsheet created and I feel that it's reduced the time to keep things organized and faster to search for a specific item or customer when needed. I also really like that I don't need to train anyone to use this program or even myself. It's very simple to learn and makes my business run so much easier.

Cons

Sometimes the connection can be lost, making it a bit slower to get things done fast, but this is normal with most programs I've used. However, when this connection lost happens, it can cause a line to build up while waiting for everything to process. I don't have much more to say about the program and features, it's been pretty good other than the connection issue.

Best for my Dollar

I've had numerous companies approach me as far as their rates to use them. Square so far has been the best. No one compares, for my small business. There are a few things here and there that I wish would be different, but when I compare what I get for what I pay, I'm very satisfied.

Pros

Invoicing, easy payments, custom register menu.

Cons

It is automatic when two discounts apply, the % will be taken before the $ amount discount. When we offer 10% off to military and they earn a $ discount, it isn't calculated properly for us. So we have to make a few tweaks in order for it to work out. Called customer service and there is no way to change this.
Also, the "Guest" feature was accidentally turned on when I was exploring adding payroll/employees to Square. Once it's activated, it can't be removed. So we now have to hit Guest each time instead of it automatically opening up the Square Register.

Great, simple and easy to use P.O.S. for many types of businesses

Overall, I used the Square POS for a limited time but during that time I liked the simplicity of its interface and its clean look.

Pros

I used the Square POS system along with the Square contactless and chip reader. What I liked about this product is its simplistic yet clean look and fits well in my business - did not take up too much space. I also liked how easy it was to learn the actual POS system. It was not complicated and very straight forward and I was able to quickly get it setup for my needs. The learning curve is very simple and everyone at the company was able to pick it up with minimal experience. I liked the clean look of the interface itself and it is very organized.

Cons

A few problems that did stick out was the fact that sometimes the reader itself would need multiple tries in order to read a card correctly. It is not of the sturdiest material and that may have contributed to not working properly at times. Also, the merchant service fee per swipe is a bit on the pricey side at 2.75% per in person transaction (higher rate for keyed in transactions). There are cheaper options available but the convenience and availability of Square products are definitely something to keep in mind.

I use the Square for multiple businesses.

Overall, the Square Point of Sale is a low cost, easy to use, and very versatile software.

Pros

The Square is small, so it is easy to take anywhere. The Square can plug into any phone with a microphone jack, and is not specific to a brand or carrier. The app is free to download, and can be used with both mobile phones and tablets. Using the app can be as simple as just typing in the total amount, or amounts for specific items can be programmed into the app, so the prices are pulled up with a click of a button. The money is sent directly to your bank account.

Cons

The stripe reader seems to get worn out fairly quickly. The charge to swipe the credit card is fair, but if you have to type the card in due to the worn out reader, or a worn our card the fee is higher. I tend to do more over the phone charges with one business, and the fee can get pretty high.